Raising Cain

Rereading the Silver Age has taught me repeatedly that my memory is fallible. Even so, sometimes my errors surprise me.I have a crystal-clear memory what happened after Dial H for Hero ended. Nobody had announced any changes to the format; when I picked up the next issue of House of Mystery, I assumed I’d once again see Robby Reed and backup J’Onn J’Onzz in action. Instead I got Cain hosting a collection of ghost stories, I clearly remember the end of one of them in which it turns out the woman protagonist and her apparent stalker are both ghosts.

Not so. The first post-Robby issue, #174——was a collection of reprints from 1959-1963, forgettable as most of Jack Schiff’s anthology stories were. None of them were the story I remember.

Okay, I said to myself, perhaps it was #175?Nope again. First we get another reprint, “The Gift of Doom,” in which a man struggles to get rid of a cursed diamond. Then we get a gag strip.I don’t know the artist, though the work looks familiar [edited: my friend Jon Maki pointed out Sergio Aragones’ signature]

Then we get Cain himself, though Jack Sparling’s art for Bob Haney’s “House of Gargoyles” isn’t what I think of as Definitive Cain.Equally non-definitive, Cain’s a landlord renting out rooms in the House, in this case to a French artist fleeing some pissed-off gargoyles. Spoiler: the gargoyles catch him. The room is up for rent again but at least Cain got his pet gargoyle Gregory (that’s what’s in his hand) out of the affair.

It’s not until #179 the following year that we switch to an all-new format. From interviews with editor Joe Orlando I’d gotten the impression he knew exactly what he was doing when he made the changeover. Maybe he wasn’t so sure and had to fiddle to figure it out? Or DC cut costs with reprints until they were satisfied an anthology would indeed succeed? In any case I’m sure it won’t be the last error of memory I make.

#SFWApro. Covers by Jack Sparling, Joe Orlando and Neal Adams, top to bottom.